Push(100)

“It’s okay, David,” I say as I brush my hand against his hair, stroking his head as if he were still the small child I am picturing in my head. For once in my life, I know the right thing to say. “You know what, she didn’t want to be saved. It wouldn’t have mattered what you did or said. She had already made up her mind. She saw you standing there, watching her, and she still chose to jump. She chose to do that to her own child. She was gone before her feet even left the bridge, and nothing was going to change that.”
He looks at me as if I just smacked him in the face. “She was sick. I don’t think she saw it as a choice.”
“She had a choice,” I say ardently. “Even if she saw suicide as her only way out, she could have made the choice to leave you out of it. But she didn’t. She involved her own child in a terrible thing—a very grown-up thing—and no child deserves that. And now you are the one who has had to think about it for all these years, and that is really f*cking unfair.” He reaches over to me and pulls me toward him. I climb on to his lap, straddling him and wrapping myself around his body. When I hear him start to sniff back more tears, I want to weep again—but instead, I keep talking. “You’re right. It’s f*cked up, David. You’re f*cked up. And I can totally see why. I can’t imagine how all this has affected you for all these years. Hell, you already know how messed up I am. You know what Michael did to my life. His choices influenced everything I did for years. And your mother’s choice did the same to you. But you have to find a way to move on. You have to stop punishing yourself for something that wasn’t your fault. We both have to.”
His hands move up to my head and bend it forward, until I am face-to-face with him. He kisses me, and it is deep and lustful. The burn in my skin turns from anger to passion, and I feel loved and needed and right.
“I can’t move on by myself, Emma. I need help. I need you to make it go away,” he says when he pulls his lips from mine. His voice is scattered and nervous.
“Listen, you already know I love you, David, and I always will. If you need me to tell you those words every f*cking day for the rest of our lives, I’ll do it. And I don’t ever have to hear them back. I’m not going away. We can move on together.”
David blinks up at me. His eyes are warm, roaming over my face carefully. He seems to be strengthened somehow. His back straightens and his mouth sets into a straight line.
He snakes his hands around my waist to the small of my back, weaving his fingers together and resting his palms against the base of my spine. “I know something you can do right now that will make everything better,” he says, the nervousness disappearing from his voice. “I know what I need.”
I look down at him and cup his face in my hands. I see the crazy current whipping through his body and vibrating in his eyes. I feel his skin start to warm beneath my hands, and because of it, I know that whatever he’s about to ask me to do is energizing and inciting his body far more than anything we have done before. There is utter and absolute ecstasy in his face.
“What is it?” I ask. “What do you need me to do?”



Emma’s Epilogue

I am standing on the bridge, and in a rush of brutal and beautiful clarity, I know. I know that I am not the only one. I know that he has done this before. With other women. In other cities. On other bridges. But it doesn’t matter. They weren’t me.
How could he have been so careless?
The green fabric of my dress is clinging to my skin, and the air is calm and humid. My hands are tied behind me, but I’m not crying. I’m not fighting. My skin is not burning with anger or fear. My brain is in charge of my body, and it is telling my instincts to go f*ck themselves. As I look out over the dark river, it is all falling into place. The picture is whole.
His breath is steady, deep. He’s always been the calm that feeds off my turmoil, is thrilled by it even. But not today. Today there is only peace. I know what he needs from me, and even as I stand here on the edge of everything, I love him. If he asked me to jump, I would. There would be no hesitation. I know that now, and he knows it, too. I suspect he always has.
I can feel the remarkable beauty in his anticipation. Doing this one thing is going to make him very, very happy, far happier than anything else we have ever done together. It is going to make everything better. I know it.
I will not fail.
I suddenly feel his hand on my face. I quietly sigh and push my head into his palm, feeling the softness of his skin. Inhaling his scent. His smile is small, sheltered. But if I do this, if this happens, his face will open with joy and his teeth will show and his eyes will brighten. He will be unstuck.
His hand falls from my face, and he drops to his knees. The sacks of sand at my feet—on my feet—feel dense. I stand still as he knots them slowly to my ankles. I am quiet because I am not afraid. I am not sad.
Right after we met, he brought me to this bridge. He showed me the colorful graffiti painted across the trusses and told me that this illicit art had turned a simple bridge into a masterpiece. It was someone’s opus, he said. The fact that some kid, probably unaware of his own talent, could create something so moving obviously touched him deeply. At the time, I wondered why he was so captivated by it. But now...now it is clear. He knew, even then, that all this would come to be. Because it had happened before. With the others.
Still, none of it matters.
Because I am here now, and I am the one.
He pushes me, and I fall, falling for him a second time. But this time, I am not falling in love. This time my descent is not in sweetness and metaphor. It is real. Bruising and literal. I am falling from the sky because I want him to love me as much as I love him. I want to put all of his broken pieces back together. And this is the only way to make that happen. I love him, in spite of all this. In spite of the son of a bitch that he really is. In spite of myself.